


TV in the Bedroom

by agentx13



Category: Captain America (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/M, sharon carter month, sharon has a cold, sick!fic, steve is a good caretaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27864418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: When Sharon comes down with a cold, Steve tries to give her everything she needs to rest and get better. It isn't lost on Sharon that some of it seems to benefit him, too.
Relationships: Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: Sharon Carter Month





	TV in the Bedroom

He comes home just as she sneezes, the movement irritating her throat and setting off a cough. He stops just inside the apartment, watching as she blows her nose.

“Fuck you,” she says, knowing what’s coming.

He ignores it, just as she’d known he would. “Feeling under the weather?” he asks.

“Fuck you,” she repeats before coughing again. “Just a dry throat.”

He nods. “You don’t get sick slowly, do you?”

Ugh. “Don’t have time to get sick at all.”

“Good thing you try to rush it, then.” His tone is soothing to the point of being nauseating. He carefully steers her toward the couch, pushes her down into the cushions with too much force for her to fight, and then disappears. Within minutes, she’s covered in a thick blanket, surrounded by pillows, has a trashcan and a box of tissues beside her, and a cheesy movie is on TV.

She wants to say she doesn’t watch thoughtless romcoms, but it’s actually blissfully easy to follow the plot when her attention wanders a little. If she’s this sick now, as least she knows she made the right decision leaving work early.

“I’m going to the store,” he announces. “We’re out of cough syrup. Want anything else?”

She grumbles and sinks deeper into the blankets. She is not gracious in the morning, nor when she’s feeling unwell. She never has been before, and she sees no reason to start now.

“Sounds good,” Steve says.

She wakes up to noises in the kitchen and sits up, reaching for her gun as she yawns. The movement and the intake of breath send her off on another coughing fit.

“Medicine,” he says sternly, and she blinks at him in surprise. Hadn’t he just left? He points at the medicine beside her, and she obligingly reads the directions and takes what she thinks is the directed amount.

Later, he sits beside her as she eats her soup and he eats a Philly cheese steak (damn serum).

“How are you feeling?” he asks after a couple mouthfuls.

“Fine,” she says. She stares at the television. “I think that’s the murderer.”

“Sharon.”

“Look at him, Steve.”

“Sharon. It’s a catheter commercial.”

She nods sagely, unwilling to back down. “So _that’s_ what drove him to do it.”

“Eat your soup,” he says, his eyes dancing with silent laughter.

She does. And then takes a steaming hot shower. Then crawls into bed. “You don’t have to take care of me,” she grumbles. She can’t breathe lying flat, so she props herself up on the pillows.

He’s reading a book as if nothing else matters in the world. “I don’t have to, no. But I want to.”

“Gross,” she teases him, before having another coughing fit. Who’s she kidding? She’s the gross one.

“Medicine,” he announces, setting the book aside.

* * *

She wakes up to find he’s moved the television into the bedroom.

“Don’t get used to it,” he warns.

She blinks at someone she could swear is Tony as he glides over to where Steve is holding a mess of cords. “Hi, Sharon! Heard you were under the weather.”

She tries to speak, but it comes out as a croak. She tries again. “Weather like a hurricane.”

He tsks and parses through the cables. “That’s rough. But we’ll get you set up.”

She looks at Steve, suspecting she’s getting set up in more ways than Tony means. Hadn’t he mentioned wanting a television in the bedroom? “Who’s playing today?”

“Playing?” Steve looks far too innocent and looks at Tony, who looks back just as innocently. “Playing what?”

She sighs. “Okay.” She can’t handle this right now. She needs medicine, fluids, and another hot shower.

* * *

She comes out of the shower, bundled up and cozy as a cat, to find him making her tea and lunch.

“Brunch in bed,” he tells her, pointing to their bedroom.

Tony is gone, and the television appears bigger than before. She’s almost certain they didn’t have those speakers before.

She crawls into bed, and he brings her a meal on a tray. “We didn’t have speakers before.”

“We didn’t?”

She turns her head to look at him. Suspiciously. “The TV is bigger, too.”

Steve looks at the television as if he’s never seen it before. “Is it?”

She sighs and eats her soup and toast.

* * *

She’s not entirely surprised that there’s a football game on in the afternoon. Neither she nor Steve are huge fans of football, but he’s doing some charity thing, like March Madness but for a different month. She falls asleep during the first quarter. Wakes up during halftime. Falls asleep again. Wakes up. “Was that Beyonce?”

“What?” Steve asks. It isn’t that he isn’t paying attention. It’s that her comment must have come out of nowhere.

There’s a series of overly-muscled almost-seven-feet-tall men on the screen, so she imagines that Beyonce is no longer around. “Halftime show?”

“Oh.” He frowns. “Maybe?”

“You didn’t watch Beyonce?”

“Do you?”

“I know that when Beyonce is on, you watch Beyonce.”

He watches her, not sure if she’s joking or not.

She sighs. Her voice still sounds like she drank a pack of cigarettes in each of her eight cups of coffee. “Nothing. Who’s winning? Charity-wise.”

“I am,” he says modestly.

Of course he is. “Good.” She gets up to go to the bathroom and yawns as she climbs back into bed.

She realizes she’s fallen asleep again when he celebrates quietly by pumping his fist, jostling the mattress.

* * *

She turns the corner the next day. She may get sick fast, but she gets over it fast, too. Well. Fast-ish. She’s more lucid, but her throat still feels like someone’s poured acid down it. Her nose is still a little stuffy, but her cough is better.

She tries to go over some work she’s brought home, but she ends up sleeping for most of the day anyway.

* * *

The next day is better. She still spends most of it in bed, but she’s able to read files and communicate over email and text. Her voice sounds like a mime desperately threatening murder against someone who sucks at charades.

At Steve’s insistence, she still plays the part of the invalid. Soup, tea, water. Crackers or toast if she wants to get something more solid. She also takes a long, hot shower.

* * *

The next day she feels human again. Her voice is still rough, but she leaves bed and treads around the apartment in tattered pajamas and an old sweater of Steve’s and talks to a couple select people on the phone.

Partly because she isn’t quite up to 100%, partly because of the television in the bedroom, Steve insists she eat dinner in bed again. He also insists on eating with her and watching old movies with the surround sound.

“You know they weren’t meant to be experienced like this,” she warns him.

“I know. I want to see what it’s like.”

She takes a mouthful of soup and watches him. They both love _The Thin Man_ movies, and he’s watching this one as intently as if he’s never seen it before. “You know the TV can’t stay in here, right?”

“I know,” he says, and if she didn’t know him so well she’d say he’s sulking. “This is the last night.” He turns toward her. “It’s almost a shame I can’t get sick.”

“I wouldn’t give you a TV in the bedroom,” Sharon warns. “It would be a quiet, dark bedroom. Maybe some whale songs.”

“Whale songs?”

“I don’t know. Something to help you sleep.”

He grins. “Whale songs,” he says again, turning back to the television and taking a bite of his tenderloin.

He’s already done chewing and is going in for another bite when he coughs.

Freezes.

Looks at her.

“I thought you can’t get sick.”

After a second, he grins. “Kidding.”

She looks at her soup and sighs.

“But can we keep the TV?” He adds an especially pathetic cough. “At least until the end of the season?”

She sighs again. Even though he can’t act pathetic to save his life, she’s going to relent, and they both know it. But as she shifts to lean her cheek against his shoulder, she finds she doesn’t mind watching TV with him like this. “Until the end of the season,” she agrees.


End file.
